cindy's world

I’ve been fatigued and easily irritated this week. And I’m hoping that the puffiness of my body is bloating that will disappear once my body does that gross thing that it’s supposed to do every month, which it has yet to do this month for some reason. *sigh* Yesterday, I woke up from a long nap at Mr. W’s house (I’ve been too tired and antisocial to go to jujitsu for the past 2 weeks) to find that my gums are sore and swollen, as though I’d been shoving tortilla chips by the fistfuls into my mouth or something, and there’s a strange slightly-painful swelling at the rim of where my lower lip becomes my chin. Today, I was too tired and hot to do much at lunch except pedal on the stationary bike for half an hour. The inside of my mouth feels too hot and my lips feel dry. *grumble*

Wait. Am I getting hot flashes?

Me (waiting by the elevator, seeing gym trainee): Hi!
Gym Trainee (passing by me): Ow.
😀
(hey, the smileys are disabled!)

Even tho my gym trainee and I are not on the same cycle, we were both physically miserable this morning. I had the hardest time getting out of bed, and when she staggered in before lunch to say hi, she looked as deflated as I felt. There’s no explanation for this — we were just out of it. She said she just wanted to find a corner somewhere and be left alone. I said that people pretty much leave us alone at the gym. She agreed. And that’s how we got ourselves to the gym at lunch even tho neither of us had much energy or motivation.

It turned out both of us had failed to bring supportive boobwear, so we couldn’t do much cardio. We got on the treadmill and walked instead, something I’d never done. Turns out walking hit different muscles from running, as I felt my shins being worked. We supersetted the 45-degree angled squat press with the assisted pull-ups, and then supersetted the hip adductor and hip abductor machines. You should’ve heard our defeated groans and sighs and seen our listless death-march trudging between the machines. I’ve always been grateful that our muscles and our bodies get the same workout benefit as long as we go thru the motions, whether our brains are on-board or not. Well, they do, don’t they?

“This isn’t just about the marathon,” Vicky said, “it really applies to any major accomplishment in your life.” Forwarded to me from Vicky:

Excerpt from Marathoning for Mortals, by John “The Penguin” Bingham and Jenny Hadfield.

The Rest of Your Life

The finish line is not the end. The finish line is the beginning. Standing at the starting line gives you permission to hope. Taking the time to train, putting in the mileage, making the changes in your life, and taking the risks has given you consent to hope for the best in yourself. The miracle is not that you finished, but that you had the courage to start.
Crossing the starting line also gives you permission to dream. You can dream about the perfect day, the perfect race, and the perfect experience. It may not happen that way, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream about it. Crossing the starting line may be an act of courage, but crossing the finish line is an act of faith. And faith is one of the most powerful emotions you can experience.
Faith is what keeps us going when nothing else will. Faith is the emotion that conquers fear. Faith is the emotion that will give you victory over your past, the demons in your soul, and all of those voices that tell you what you can and cannot do and can and cannot be.
If standing at the starting line gives you permission to dream, crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan. Crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan for your next success, to plan for the realization of your next dream. The last step of the race is the first step of the rest of your life.
What you do now is up to you. You’ve seen what you can do. If you’ve stuck with the training program, you’ve seen yourself filled with joy and blinded by frustration. You’ve overcome your fears. You’ve been humbled by both the strength and fragility of your body. You’ve found what you thought were your limits and gone beyond them.
You’ve also learned that what stops most of us from achieving our dreams as athletes and as people are the confines of our imaginations. We can never be more than we imagine we can be. And as long as we restrict ourselves by our imaginations, we forever bind ourselves to our past and blind ourselves to our futures.
Your limits lie behind you now. With that one final step across the finish line, you liberated yourself from everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. You have taken the very first step on the course to your destiny.

I judge the efficacy of my workouts by the patterns on the backs of my clothing when I peel them off in the locker room. If the back of my sports bra has darkened in color, that’s good and I smile. If the lower back of my shirt has a pattern that I call “wings,” that’s even better. The vertical dip along my spine does not make much contact with my shirt, so that part of the fabric usually stays dry. Small hand-sized feathers of sweat fan upward and outward on the lower right and lower left sides of my back from my movement.

Earlier at lunch, my goal was to hit a 4 mile jog. I hadn’t been religious with my jujitsu, running or weight-training in the past couple of weeks. PMS will do that to your spirit. I looked forward to this run, however, because I had finally picked up some AAA batteries for my MP3 player. I started the run at 5.8 mph, and ran effortlessly with the music for 3.25 miles. I wanted to push more throughout this duration, but I was afraid that the excess energy I felt in the beginning would be misleading as to how much energy I had in reserve for later. But with only 3/4 of a mile left to go, I increased the speed to 6 mph (a 10-minute mile). The music jumped to something absolutely inspirational, and I saw the body I had last year at this time in my head, and imagined myself to be running toward achieving that body shape again. At 6.2 mph, I finished 4.5 miles with energy to spare. Never did I pant, never did I feel overwhelmed or bored. Whenever I checked the clock, it was with regret at the speed of the passing time, and never in aggravation that I’d only run for a few minutes that felt like hours. I noted in mid run that I felt good, and the warmth rising from my body felt good, and the rivulets of sweat racing down my chest and back felt good.

In the locker room, I saw that the entire back of my sports bra was wet to the point of wring-able, not that I tried. The diagonal spaces in between the fingers and the vertical space in between the wings on the lower back of my gray shirt had completely filled, so that instead of looking at a small wingspan, I was looking at a heart. What little fabric there is of the back of my thong was soaked through and made almost transparent by my exertion, such that I could not bring myself to put it back on after my shower. I smiled at the V-shaped red lines that ran from either side my neck down to meet in between my breasts, evidence of my MP3 player that I wore around my neck and tucked through my sports bra.

I hope this ability to run harder, faster, and to want to do so stays with me.

I’m gonna take belly dancing on Thursdays beginning in a few weeks. That’ll replace yoga (which Mr. W says he’s starting to hate). There are a few coworkers that took it together this past session and one of them has been on me about joining in. Vanessa and I have been saying we want to do that anyway. I hope Vanessa is able to make Thursdays with us, that’d be really fun! By next month, it’s gonna be weights, running, jujitsu and bellydancing. Don’t you guys wish you live closer to me? You could come, too! (I have no idea whom I’m talking to. *looking around* Uh…Jordan! *pointing*)

Speaking of running, I did 4 miles at lunch today. The heat almost lifted me away like a dirigible. My trainee did over 2 miles next to me. She’s now able to sustain a 5-min run. That’s really impressive.

Oh yeah. This Sunday, I was in the emergency room at like midnight and the nurse took my blood pressure. He said, “Your heart’s really good! You work out? Run a lot?” I looked over at the machine. My pulse was 55, which is lower than I’d ever seen it, it’s usually in the high 60s to low 70s. Unfortunately, my diastolic (or systolic, which ever one means the higher number) blood pressure was 134 or 136, I can’t remember which, and I asked him isn’t that kinda high? He said for my age, “high” would be 140. I said, “Isn’t it getting kinda close to that?” He said dismissively, “Eh, you’ve been up all night.”

Speaking of exercise and goals and stuff, I hear Hawaii is a great place to take surfing lessons; the water’s warm, the instructors give discounts to women, you’re learning with other beginners so you don’t have to feel stupid… so I may be crossing something new off my old goals list after all come October/November.

The first thing Mr. W and I did this morning was run about 4 miles and then walk another mile to complete a 5-mile course. I just got back into running again this week, and this is my 3rd run. I’m optimistic about completing 12 miles (no stopping) before the half-marathon. I just gotta figure out when, between jujitsu, work and my weekends, I would have time to train. I suppose if I drag Mr. W with me, I can train with some company on the weekends for long runs.

I’m actually kind of excited for lunch today. Earlier this week, my gym trainee for the first time got on the treadmill. She can’t run distance yet, but her goal is to get into good enough cardiovascular shape where she can do 3 miles w/o stopping. When I first started training with her, she was too loose and heavy to run on the treadmill at all. But on Tuesday(?), after a minute-long brisk walk, she started with a 30-second jog, then brought it back down to a brisk walk, and then 45 seconds, then walk, and so on with me monitoring her heartrate and recovery time until she got up to a 2 min 15 sec jog in her final increment. We were on the treadmill for a total of 30 mins (I did a 3-mile run next to her while monitoring her and yelling encouragement and instruction) and her total distance was just over 2 miles. I’m so proud of her, and she was surprised at herself. I was actually surprised at myself, too, since I hadn’t run in probably over a month. I suppose I can’t keep procastinating on the training forever. There IS that expensive half-marathon in September I’m committed to.

So yeah, today at lunch we’re hitting the treadmill again.

Oh, yesterday at lunch I went to the other gym I belong to that I hadn’t been to in months. I was on the elliptical trainer and this guy walked up and stood in front of me, looking at the empty elliptical machines around me and at me. I refused to make eye contact, as usual. He stood there for what seemed like 3 minutes, while I thought at him, “Don’t stand so close to me! Leave! Go away!” Finally he spoke to me and asked me questions about the elliptical trainer, what muscles it works, whether the machine next to me is the same as the one I’m on, etc, and since he’s talking workout, I got friendly and talked to him and answered his questions. Soon, a district attorney in the building got on the elliptical trainer to my right and said very pointedly, “Hi, Cindy.” I said hello to him, noticed he did not put his usual headset on. The guy and I finished off our conversation about the machine, he thanked me and then took off. “What was THAT?” demanded the DA. I said he was asking about the machine. He shook his head. “Yeah right! I’ve seen him in here and he’s NEVER on these machines.” I said, “Oh. Well, maybe he’d like to start.” The DA said, “The way to START is to get ON one.” Good point. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said. I said, “So I gave him a trainer’s pep talk for 3 minutes for nothing?” “Yeah!” It’s sad when someone needs to come over to cock-block cuz I don’t know when I’m being hit on. Later, when I was doing freeweights, I heard my name being called from behind. I turned and it was a guy that I’d met and gotten friendly with at that gym, whom I hadn’t seen in months. He’s back to the gym after 8, 9 months of being away, he said, and shook my hand and gave me a big encouraging smile. (This is the guy who complimented my personality before. Haha.) Then he was off. And then I saw 2 of my female coworkers working out together and chatting, and we said hello across the weight floor. They said they just joined a few weeks ago. So it turned out to be a strange social hour for me, despite the fact that I usually never socialize at the gym.

Happy May Day, people. On the drive to work this morning, a listener called the radio station and asked the on-air personalities what they think of “Mexican Day today.” He was referring to the planned walk-out Mexicans here are doing today for demonstrations and rallying downtown in protest to our present immigration laws and policies. The caller said he was “100% Mexican,” and that he’s in support of their demonstration, but feels that to make a real impact on the importance of Mexican immigrants in the nation, they shouldn’t just do the walk-out for a day; they should do it for weeks, or a month. The DJs said that if people demonstrating stay out for a week, they could lose their jobs, and the kids who walk out of school to support the demonstration long-term would be losing out on their education. The caller said, “But when you want something done, you need to be ready for the consequences. I say we get all us together and VOTE –” The DJs said, “But most of these people demonstrating can’t vote because they’re illegal, that’s what they’re rallying about –” The caller jumped in with, “Well, if it were up to me, I’d walk out there, have my Uzi and I’d point that around –” and the DJs cut him off there and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Now what’s THAT gonna prove for you? Now if it were idiot walk-out day, I’d be on board for that!”

I’m exhausted, I can’t focus my eyes, and I couldn’t call in sick today because administration’s policy is that anyone not appearing at work today without a doctor’s documentation to verify actual ailment would be assumed to be acting in solidarity with the Mexican ditch effort and we’d be considered absent without permission/pay.

Stupid.

It didn’t take much at all for Vanessa to convince me to skip jujitsu and go with her to the gym to hit the steam room and the jacuzzi. So after a dinner of specialty rolls at a nearby sushi restaurant, we did. I had sore muscles from my Monday workout (altho my trainee claims to have no soreness anywhere from it) which I think has been alleviated from all the heated water and epsom salt we rubbed on ourselves in the steam room. Epsom salt, by the way, is not salty. I licked a grain in the steam room. It’s cool in temperature, doesn’t dissolve as fast as table salt, and has a bitter taste. The ingredients say that epsom salt is magnesium sulfate. Whatever that is. I barely passed chemistry by the skin of my teeth. It lost me at nomenclature.

I was driving with Vanessa next to me turning right from the street into the driveway of the gym, and I was aware, to the extent that normal drivers are aware, of a Corolla waiting to pull out of the driveway I was going into. I know there was a young male behind the wheel with no passengers, and that was as much as I picked up. Vanessa said suddenly, “Hey, he’s totally checking you out!” I had already driven past him, so I couldn’t verify. “Isn’t he young? Why would he be checking me out? He was probably just looking as I pulled in.” She said that yes, he seemed young, in his early 20s. He seemed like a basketball jock, and she knew he was checking me out because he didn’t just look up as I pulled in, he turned his head and kept looking as I drove past him. “Maybe he was looking at you,” I suggested to her. “No, his eyes were not looking in my direction,” she said, “And I was looking at him. I had the whole internal dialogue of, ‘He’s cute. Oh, he looks young. Hey, he’s totally checking out Cindy!” Any day that someone in their early 20s seems to find me attractive is a good day.

I now have my load of whites going in the dryer and candles lit, redistributed with the pieces of wax from Grace’s candle. I like having her around. It makes me productive and distracted. And the laughing and social therapy helps, too. I can’t believe she’s been here 3 weeks already. She’ll be moving out soon. 🙁 Dodo’s gonna miss her.